Google has decided that the route I cycle to work is not the right one. In many ways it is right...not least because on Friday some joker turned left in front of me in Leytonstone and it's as close to death as I've ever been. Even when I hurled four-letter abuse and witnesses remonstrated with him he was adamant he'd done nothing wrong. The Cat's Mother thinks that one day someone will thump me for getting angry with them...she may be right. Someone in the office has suggested an anger management course....
Anyway, the Google route (it pops up on my phone whether I ask for it or not) takes me even further along the canals of London and the Home Counties than I normally go. It's a lot longer, but flatter for most of the way until I come off the canals and then have to climb the North Face of the Eiger. I love cycling along the canals so that's not an issue. But as I near home, it takes me through the Forest. Which is fine if you have a mountain bike, or better still a Land Rover, but on my carbon-fibre, Bradley Wiggins style road-bike it's a bit challenging. It made me think of all those stories about people blindly following sat navs into rivers, off cliffs or down roads so narrow they get stuck.
Although it might not sound like it, we had a remarkably relaxed weekend...it was genuine bliss to have no parental responsibility and no real plans. We saw the new Alan Partridge film Alpha Papa which only confirmed my view that Steve Coogan does not really have much to offer. It was mildly amusing, very predictable and not very clever.
We then headed off to a bar that I had spied on my canal-side travels. The White Building in Hackney Wick. It was a terrific place...well how could it not be as a bar by the waterside with a view of canal boats gliding past. The Cat's Mother was concerned that we had doubled the average age of people there...but as I pointed out, they were all beautiful young things and no doubt cutting--edge creative, probably working in digital media...when we left after a couple of drinks, we headed out through the Olympic Park which is gradually taking shape and will be a terrific place when it's finished next year.
Sunday I met up with some friends and fellow OOC performers to look at an exhibition at London Museum of costumes from the event. London Museum is a really great place to while away several hours as it traces the history of the city from its earliest days to the present day...highly recommended. But skip the costumes exhibit as it was pretty poor.
The evening was spent curled up on the sofa with The Cat's Mother watching Johnny Depp in The Rum Diaries...that's the film where he met the woman who stole him away from Vanessa Paradise. I picked the Blu-Ray up cheaply from Play.com, and now I see why. It is just possible that he has lost the ability to act, and Bruce Robinson can neither write nor direct. The scenery was glorious, the rest was poor enough that we were tempted to turn it off...which is quite surprising given how much I'd been looking forward to it.